Transcendentalism: a Religion or a Philosophy?

American transcendentalism was an important movement in philosophy and literature that flourished during the early to middle years of the nineteenth century (about 1836-1860). It began as a reform movement in the Unitarian church, extending the views of William Ellery Channing on an indwelling God and the significance of intuitive thought. It was based on "a monism holding to the unity of the world and God, and the immanence of God in the world" (Oxford Companion to American Literature 770). For the transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains.

Transcendentalists rejected Lockean empiricism, unlike the Unitarians: they wanted to rejuvenate the mystical aspects of New England Calvinism (although none of its dogma) and to go back to Jonathan Edwards' "divine and supernatural light," imparted immediately to the soul by the spirit of God.

Key statements of its doctrine include Emerson's essays, especia...